It's been another insane week at work!  New projects, more demands, more homework, more deadlines, arrrggghhh!!!

I've done good with keeping up my routing this week.  Monday went to the YMCA, Tuesday running, Wednesday zumba, Thursday running and I am not sure what I am doing tonight!  Sunday will be plans for a big run with Cheyenne.

I am super proud of my girlfriend for keeping up her food journal this week, by far the hardest part of this journey!  With all the hustle and bustle of life it is hard to remember and to get in the habit of journaling everything, but it is absolutely critical in the attempt to take control of our health and life!  I am excited to meet on Monday to see what progress has been made.

This weekend will be a juggle with Cody.  Kurt and Ethan are heading out hunting so Dom and I are hanging out tonight.  Then tomorrow Dom will be off to a sleepover right after football so hopefully Cody will be a good boy for me and I can get some homework done!  Hopefully I won't pull all my hair out!!!

It's been a crazy week this last week.  Last Monday I went to Zumba, Tuesday went for a run, Wednesday lifted weights, Thursday ran, Friday and Saturday I took off then on Sunday did a trail run with Cheyenne.  Stepped on the scale today and yes, this is paying off!  As I continue my active lifestyle and scrutinizing calories I know that it DOES make a difference.  The number is in a steady decline, even if it is slow, it is going in the right direction.  I find myself satisfied with the choices I make and don't miss beating myself up about falling off the wagon.

Now I need to pull myself together and get my class stuff together.  For some reason my classes just are not clicking the way I would like them to, especially my statistics class.  That has always been a struggle for me, but usually I can at least pull through a good grade.  I will continue to study, but I am really hoping that it takes a turn for the good ASAP!

I had my first workout with my friend Tanya that I am helping to lose weight.  We took down her beginning weight and BMI and have officially started!  We did the full circuit of Cybex machines at the YMCA and did 15 minutes on the recumbent bikes.  This is a great first step in the right direction.  Small changes lead to big changes!

Have a great day!

Jessica

Power in numbers.

My good friend sent me a text for help this morning.  She's had enough with the battle and needs help.  I LOVE getting a text like this.  It's a step in the right direction to reach out and ask for help when needed.  I am and WILL be there for her in this journey.  Now my research begins.  What is an ideal goal weight, what should the first attainable goal be?  What amount of calories do we need to cut, what are her current eating habits?  I am doing lots of background work to design a path for us to take.  She has agreed to join the YMCA and I will hold her accountable and make her go to class with me.  There is a lot of work ahead, but having a workout buddy makes it more enjoyable and accountable!
I just want to stress the importance of having a good support system.  Good friends should support what you are trying to achieve and not derail you.  Our world is full of temptations and bad (cheap) choices.  It takes hard work and determination to obtain success, but it is so within our reach! 
This week has been busy physically for me.  Monday night I went to Zumba, so fun!  Yesterday I went for a run and tonight I went to the YMCA to lift weights.  Tomorrow I plan on taking a run and then squeezing in a run while we are up in Duluth. 

Nobody ever said life was easy, be strong!

Jessica

My hips don't lie...but they don't take direction well either!

Today I took my first zumba class.  So much fun!  The moves were fast paced, there were disco lights and loud music!  It didn't even seem like an exercise class.  So it's been awhile since I've had to try to keep in step with any dance moves and yes, I was awkward and missed 90% of them or was three steps behind them, but I was moving and shaking and yes, exercising!!!  This is something I will look forward to doing in the future.  I really have a lot of respect and admiration for these teachers.  It must be hard enough to do these moves fluidly, but to keep step and to encourage while you are doing it, wow!

Stepping on my scale before I went to class was a great experience too today.  The scale was actually at my morning weight which is great!  It means that I am continuing to go down, yes!!!  It has actually been a good few days in a row of staying under my 1,500 calorie threshold.  My new habits are starting to pay off and it's been over a week again of being pop free!  I've also starting drinking the Yogi detox tea once a day too just to help cleanse my system.

Happy thoughts to everyone!  Peace out!

Jessica

It's been a fun weekend.  We went to the arboretum in Brainerd today and took some family photos.  So nice, but a bit warm for picture taking!  I did get some great shots though so it was a success!  This morning I got up nice and early and had Ethan watch Cody so I could take a run.  I went for a nice 4 mile one.  I hope I can get together with my sister sometime this week and make it out on a long run.  Yesterday I made it to the YMCA with the boys in the morning before Dominik's football game.  I did the stair climber for 35 minutes and the boys played basketball in the gym.  That worked out pretty well.  This week on Wednesday Ethan and I will have an orientation on how to use the Cybex machines.  I look forward to getting Ethan involved in lifting some weights.  I think it will help increase his overall confidence if he gets stronger and beefs up a little bit.  Homework continues to be a struggle.  I have to admit though I am not giving it the attention that it needs.  It is especially hard with Cody because if he sees me at the computer than he gets super whiny and needs my attention and it is impossible to accomplish anything.  I need to get better at working on it at night down in my office area.  It has been hard for me to concentrate after they go to bed, I am not sure why.  I start thinking about things and then get increasingly stressed and tired and give up and go to bed at 10.
Overall my diet has been going really well.  I am down this week and broke a plateau!  Now I have to keep it going and keep falling under my calorie count and success shall continue!

Me after my run this morning, sweaty!

Rock on this week!

Jessica

Thank you flu, your help is appreciated.

So this morning around 2, I started feeling sick.  My stomach was upset and I had a feeling it was going to get worse.  By 3 I had the spins that naturally occur when you've had too much fun the night before (which was not my issue) and felt like maybe I should venture to the kitchen to grab a large bowl in case I got sick, but I felt too bad to even make it that far.  By 4 I was throwing up in the bathroom, narrowly making it there in time!  I was sweating terribly, my stomach hurt and I felt like I was going to pass out.  When it came time for me to get up to get ready for work, I took a shower that only lasted about three minutes because I felt weak and dizzy and decided I needed to go back to bed.  Cody hasn't been feeling the best either so I asked Kurt to stay home and take care of Cody and me if I needed it.

I proceeded with my normal morning weigh in like I do every day and was pleased to see I was down 1.6 lbs!  Yes to being sick!  After I rested until around 9:30 I felt like I could be out of bed, so I watched some TV and had some coffee.  Kurt decided to run an errand with Cody around 10:30 and I felt like I was recovered enough to go to work for awhile as I am swamped!

This morning as I was updating my food journal and looking at my charts I realized it's time for me to reconfigure my calorie requirements since I've lost additional weight recently.  Now in order to keep losing I need to consume around 1,500 calories a day!  Wow, I thought 1,800 seemed hard to do!  I will do it though and I will continue to succeed!  My head is clear, my goals are clear and I need to just continue on my path.

Best wishes to all for the weekend, I am hoping that Cody and I make a full recovery from our illnesses!
Jessica

Sanity - Where did you go???

It's been madness.  My classes are in full swing now and I've got too much to learn.  I wish I had not signed up for six classes, it is simply too much with working full time and have three kids to take care of.  All I can do at this point is to just keep going and do my best!  I can't afford to back out now!  Next semester I won't sign up for as many, maybe just three classes.  I don't feel like I am retaining anything because I am just scrambling to get homework done.

My fitness time this week has suffered.  I will kick it hard next week though.  I am continuing to lose this week thanks to following my food journal and consuming less than 1,755 calories a day.  I need to sit down and figure out where I am with all of my assignments this weekend so that I can work out without thinking about what I am behind on.  I don't like this feeling!

I've been doing great with avoiding pop as well thanks to reading that research article.  It's been four days now, yippee!  Considering I went months before, this shouldn't be an issue.  At times of stress though I definitely feel like it is something I crave.

I don't have much to report.  Today I am getting my hair done, yes!  Time to get fabulous again! 

Have a great day everyone!

Jessica

Superfantastical sorta day!

Today was a great day for my waistline.  I've rededicated myself to my food journal and man does that pay off!  I am amazed at all the times I wanted a snack or thought about having a snack and then checked the calorie content and decided not to, yeah for me!  I also made it all day without having a soda.  I think this last week was just so stressful that it brought out my bad habits which then leads to all of the diet pop drinking.  I have no flipping clue either why I drink it so much because when I do, it makes me feel like crap, I get bloated, and then the next day I look bloated and it makes my nails go bad. 

This week for one of my courses we had to read a research paper on the consumption of diet soda and it's effect on our vascular health and it's link to metabolic syndrome.  There is a serious link and increase in these health issues with people who consume diet soda, even light drinkers who drink a can a day.  There is more research to be done because the study did not include the lifestyles of those who drank diet soda, but it makes me even more aware that it is not a smart thing for me to be drinking, not even occasionally when I fall off the wagon.

Interesting stuff that I am getting into, I am glad I chose to go this route with my education and career.  The health field is the place for me!

Cheyenne and I had an amazing run yesterday!  We ran 6.3 miles together which was the farthest she has ran so far.  She can easily do a half marathon, I am so excited for October!  We make a good running pair, our overall average was 9'30" miles yesterday which is super good!

Make this day your best!  Now I am off to work on lots and lots of homework!!

Peace out~Jessica

 

Happy Birthday....to me!!!

This is the theme of the day today.  Today I have turned 33 years old, wow, I am getting up there.  I don't feel that old, I actually feel pretty good.  I live an active, relatively healthy lifestyle and can hold my own.  I don't miss my youthful years filled with drama, but I miss my children being little and the years going by too fast.  I actually look forward to getting older.  I am looking forward to retirement someday, having my house paid off in the next twelve years and watching my kids find their true loves and having children of their own.  The next twenty years will be action packed.

I don't make new year resolutions but when I have my birthday it always makes me self reflect and think about what I want to do in the next year. 

I want to:

Reach my goal weight - 140lbs
Initiate and follow a household budget and savings plan
Plan for a 10 year anniversary trip with Kurt

These are my three goals for now.  I think they are accomplish able.  Next year my goal will include college graduation, yeah!

I am spending the rest of the afternoon around the house and will be going on a six mile run with Cheyenne, I love that girl!  Then I will come home to work on homework, housework and watch Big Brother, it's my guilty pleasure.

Thanks for reading!

Jessica

Balancing Act!

So this has been an extremely mentally challenging week this week.  My full time class schedule fully went into effect this week.  I am now enrolled in six classes.  Yes, I am still working full time, which has it's challenges too.  This week we were short staffed at my work and I had to step in and do a job that I don't normally do and have never done for the company.  This task was on top of my already full plate.  My manager would have liked to see me put in some overtime, but with my full class schedule and limited time that I have with my kids and regular household stuff, I just can't even begin to think about spending more time at the office and not at home.  By the end of the day today I felt like I was nearing a panic attack.  I got home from work, immediately started on my case study that was due tomorrow by noon and instantly felt more relieved.  Now I get to begin sorting through the rest of my class schedules and working on assignments that are due over the weekend.  I believe this will be doable, I just need to settle into a routine with my work and with my family.  It all seems to balance out after a couple of weeks.
My weight has finally dropped down to what I was before I left for the weekend.  I do need to step up my water intake and quit having so many not healthy snacks.  It seems like when I get under these high stress situations that I seem to veer off track.  I've had way too much diet pop this weekend and need to STOP NOW!!!

Below is a quote I saw on Coach Calorie this morning and I think it's a great quote to go by!



Have a great night!

Jessica

September 5th

Hello World!

The boys are back and school and my house is intact for a few more hours a day than normal.  It's nice to have them back on a routine away from home.  I am also offically back in school too.  I will be attending my second class at CLC this afternoon.  As I was working on homework last night for four hours straight I found myself daydreaming about what ever made me so driven to get my Bachelor's Degree.  It was like I literally woke up one day and decided that it was important to me to have a college degree.  I think some of it is status (which is strange because I am racking up lots of debt with the education), some of it is to show my kids that a college degree is important and lastly to get into a career field that I actually enjoy.  I love learning about fitness, healthy lifestyles, trends, health issues and exercise pyschology.  It's what I was meant to do.  Yeah, it kind of sucks that it took 30 years to figure that out, but hopefully I will wrap up my schooling in the next two years and be able to live out the rest of my working life doing something that I love. 
I haven't done much fitness wise this week.  I finally feel recovered from my run (yes!) and will start working out tomorrow.  I am excited and grateful that Nike replaced my beloved Sportband that decided to quit working after a software upgrade.  I will be back to logging those miles again online, just stinks that I wasn't able to record my half marathon through there.

Here are the details for my next Half Marathon adventure with Cheyenne!  Now to think of a costume!

http://www.minnesotamonster.org/

Peace out!

Jessica

September 2nd

Refocus.  Re-energize.

Hi Everyone,
Wow, what a weekend!  My mom and I ran in the inaugural Women Rock Half Marathon in St Paul this weekend.  The race itself was more difficult than I had envisioned it being.  I started my race with the 2:10 pacer.  As I was talking and running with her I learned that she paces over twenty races a season!  They can be a mixture of marathons, half marathons and triathlons.  How inspiring and what an amazing job!  She travels to an average of five states per season for various races.  She was so motivating and provided encouragement when tackling hills, encouraging to not stop, don't walk and providing updates when she knew a shaded corner was coming or reminders to roll our shoulders when running downhill.  I stayed with her for the first four miles then ventured out in front of the pack for the next five miles and then regrouped with them when there were around three miles left.  I was really glad that I ended up with the small group when their were a few miles left, I was really losing my pace and was mentally struggling with the hills.  At least with running with the group again I managed to maintain my pace and follow their feet through the end and never slowed down to a walk.  The course was MUCH more hilly that I thought it would be.  Even though the course showed a net decrease in elevation, the hills were so long, steep and rolling that it felt like the majority of the race was spent running up hill.  Oh well, I still made it and did pretty darn well!  I finished in 2:10, which is averaging about a 9:55 mile.  This was about twelve minutes faster than the overall average speed and nine minutes under the median for the race.  Yeah for me!
Of course with spending the day/night/day in the metro area I consumed more food than I would have liked to see myself eat.  I am not going to spend time dwelling on that and instead am going to choose to refocus on what I need to do to get where I want to go.  Obviously all of my work outs are paying off!

I also have a new event to look forward to!  While we were at the health expo my sister Cheyenne said that she really wanted to train for a half marathon and try one.  So we signed up and committed to running the Monster Dash on October 27th!  I love having goals like this because it forces me to re-energize in everything I do and continue my training and healthy eating.  Cheyenne heard that it could be the same race course, so if that is the case I will definitely be adding more hill training to my routine!

Have a great week!  Make today a great day!

Jessica